The removal of a covering from a core strand is well known in the art. Examples are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,309,947; 3,724,189; 3,858,776; 3,936,922; 3,975,208; 3,977,277 and 4,083,096. All these systems however, are able to remove a jacket from only a single strand. Since multiplex cable and multiplex wire is made up of at least three strands, at least two of which are jacketed, it is required that each strand be separated from the multiplex cable before being processed by one of the methods described in the above reference patents. An alternate method of recovering the conductor is to chop the entire cable into small pieces which may be separated by sifting means. This method is generally inefficient on larger sizes of cable which includes most of what is referred to as multiplex cable.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,988,666 and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 362,726 filed 03/29/82 also relate to the present inventon because both of these processes act on individual strands of multiplex cable.